“The video released last week by The Beer Store is such a low blow to the 70,000 men and women that work in a convenience store in Ontario. Are the foreign owners of Ontario’s beer monopoly so afraid of competition that they need to resort to demonizing and attacking the hardworking men and women that work in our stores?”

—Tom Moher, vice president of Mac’s, speaking about this piece of artfully directed pro-Beer Store propaganda, a screenshot of which is above. Moher was quoted in a Mac’s press release, issued yesterday in response to the thinly veiled attack ad, which basically portrays convenience-store owners as seedy, amoral creeps intent on plying Ontario’s impressionable youth with booze. (Here’s our second-by-second rundown.) Moher went on to defend Mac’s responsible-selling record, claiming that the company’s stores have a 95-per-cent success rate when it comes to checking IDs, according to mystery-shopper tests conducted by an independent third party. He then turned things around on the big, bad booze cartel. “We challenge the Beer Store to make their internal numbers public,” he said. “What penalties does the Beer Store face for infractions? Who enforces the Beer Store?” All good questions.

The question no-one’s asking:
how does the Ontario government benefit from 80% of our beer sales going through a privately-owned megacorporation like The Beer Store? Why does the government not want to give up an inch of freedom via the LCBO, but they’re cool with The Beer Store running the beer show in Ontario and taking more profit out of the LCBO’s pocket?

There *has* to be something happening behind the scenes to make this make sense. or under a table.